After deal with AT&T fizzles, San Francisco builds its own free Wi-Fi

If you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself.

San Francisco said today that it has launched free wireless Internet on a heavily trafficked part of Market Street, "the City’s busiest and most economically diverse corridor."

The city has been aiming to make Wi-Fi universally available for years. Nearly seven years ago it announced a deal with EarthLink to bring free Wi-Fi to all of San Francisco. That plan didn't pan out, but last year San Francisco had a tentative agreement with AT&T to supply Wi-Fi along Market Street. That didn't come to fruition either, but the failure helped San Francisco realize that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

The city had signed a tentative agreement with AT&T in September 2012 to have the telecommunications company provide a free Market Street Wi-Fi network, but it expired before a final deal could be hammered out.

"It was simpler, faster, better to do it on our own," said Marc Touitou, whom [Mayor Edwin] Lee appointed as the city's chief information officer in April. "The quality is higher with the technical design by the Department of Technology. We wanted high capacity... We wanted it to be cool—no strings attached, no ads."

Touitou's team ran fiber-optic cable along Market Street and then connected it to network equipment set up on traffic lights and other city-owned fixtures.

The network was quietly brought online in stages over the past several months, and it was up and running late Friday under the network name _San_Francisco_Free_WiFi.

“Nearly a quarter-million people walk down Market Street every day, and now they will be able to connect to the Internet through our free public Wi-Fi,” Mayor Lee said in an announcement.

The deployment cost the city $500,000, but it would have been more if not for hardware donations from Ruckus Wireless and Internet access contributed by Layer42 Networks.

The city already had "free Wi-Fi at San Francisco International Airport, public housing developments, and parts of City Hall," the Chronicle noted. Google has also pledged to provide free Wi-Fi in 31 San Francisco parks for at least two years.

AllThingsD reports that the Market Street network is "built to reach speeds of up to 50 Mbps both up and downstream," although a city FAQ cautions that "the connection speed will vary depending on a number of factors: Numbers of current users, Signal strength, and Device." The FAQ also notes that the Wi-Fi "coverage area is only as wide as Market St and only outdoors."